Jack Schofield
Netwatch
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is taking over the Net. It’s not the official site that’s the problem but a supporting cast of sites for fans who will queue for up to two weeks to see it. You can get your daily dose of Star Wars at or or try JediNet, a very professional-looking fan site. You can see how the queues are going or watch out for the start of Countdown TV. Phantom Menace is not due for release in South Africa until June 26, but real fans will be on planes to the United States long before then.
All the Web is a new search engine that plans to cover all the Web, or certainly more of it than Compaq’s AltaVista. The service has gone live with 80-million pages indexed, and should pass 200-million pages this summer. It runs on Dell PowerEdge 4300 servers and at the moment it’s amazingly fast, though that may be because hardly anyone knows it’s there. The search technology has been developed by Fast Search & Transfer ASA from Oslo, in Norway. Although not yet famous, the company supplied the search technology used by Lycos’s MP3 search engine for finding sound files on the Net, and by what is claimed to be the world’s largest file download site.
The Everest expedition to find the remains of climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who disappeared in 1924, is reporting its progress day by day on the Web. The expedition got worldwide coverage recently when it found Mallory’s body.